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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9435705" data-attributes="member: 18">That's not the case re lootboxes. Almost none are or ever have been P2W in any Western game. So your impression is largely incorrect. P2W has been an issue in Asian games more but was long before lootboxes.The issues with lootboxes are two-fold, and they're why countries in Europe and Asia are increasingly regulating them or making them outright illegal. Also why even before that a lot of games were moving away from them as customers don't actually like them, and in the case of two similar games, the one with direct purchases will potentially outperform the one with lootboxes (Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes, for example - they discontinued them in 2019 and this apparently did hurt their bottom line - they just sold the things that used to be in them directly for a fixed price).1) Lootboxes are essentially gambling. They don't quite meet the technical definition (solely because you can't "cash out") in a lot of countries so flew under the radar, but you're teaching people to keep throwing money at them to potentially get a thing. And often those people are children. This is bad and demonstrably addictive, which is obviously not great in a child aimed product. This is exacerbated by lootbox opening animations and sounds clearly designed to maximise excitement in kids, which like, ugh.2) Lootboxes, unlike typical gambling, don't usually show the odds of any given item, meaning that people can't even assess how much the average cost of obtaining something might be, or assess the value at all really. Asian countries in particular have legislated to force companies to show odds on these. And it's notable that as soon as you do show odds, people do start spending less on them. People aren't as irrational as we might fear with numbers in front of them.This is rather different from random minis or even TCG cards (despite some similarities) not only because those are physical and you have to go get them, which reduces addiction and overspending issues in all but the most dedicated, but also because those tend to contain stuff that's more or less useful, and that you can at least trade/re-sell, whereas lootboxes typically have contents that cannot be transferred and are next to worthless if they don't have the 1-2 things you're after (especially if they contain consumables or the like).</blockquote>

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